US Sen Thom Tillis (R-NC) during a press conference on February 17, 2025 in Kyiv, Ukraine.

WASHINGTON — Republican lawmakers stressed their support for Ukraine as US President Donald Trump, the leader of their party, hurled shocking attacks against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, stunning European allies and appearing to upend decades of US support for victims of Russian aggression.

“There is no moral equivalency between Vladimir Putin and President Zelenskyy. President Putin is evil, and he has to be stopped,” Senator Thom Tillis (Republican, North Carolina), who visited Ukraine over the weekend as part of a bipartisan congressional delegation, told reporters on Wednesday.

The North Carolina Republican called the Russian president “a murderous dictator who started this war, ordered the occupation, and now the souls of tens of thousands of Ukrainians are lost on his watch.”

“He has lied every step of the way, and I believe any resolution in Ukraine that makes him feel like he won or just pushed to a tie is a bad idea,” Tillis added.

Trump used his Truth Social platform on Wednesday to lash out at Zelenskyy and call the Ukrainian a “dictator without elections” who has “done a terrible job” defending his country. Ukraine........

© HuffPost